Amish Friendship Bread

Brooke has gotten me hooked on Amish Friendship bread! She gave me the starter a few weeks ago and I have made two batches so far. 

The first round I made it into pumpkin chocolate chip bread. I made it low fat by using canned pumpkin to substitute most of the oil. I made this round with apples and applesauce to reduce the oil again and it turned out great! Haws was saying it is the best low-fat bread he has tasted. It is pretty easy too! I can't wait to try out more variations. I think I am going to try to make either zucchini  or carrot next time.

In case you want to jump on the band wagon... here is what you do for the regular bread

Amish Friendship Bread Recipe

Day 1 - receive the starter (the recipe for the starter is below)

Day 2 - stir

Day 3 - stir

Day 4 - stir

Day 5 - Add 1 cup each flour, sugar and milk.

Day 6 - stir

Day 7 - stir

Day 8 - stir

Day 9 - stir

Day 10 - Add 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar and 1 cup milk. Divide into 4 containers, with 1 cup each for three of your friends and 1 cup for your own loaves. Give friends the instructions for Day 1 through Day 10 and the following recipe for baking the bread.

After removing the 3 cups of batter, combine the remaining cup of Amish Friendship Bread starter with the following ingredients in a large bowl:

1 cup oil
3 eggs
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
1 to 1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda

1 large package vanilla pudding

Grease two loaf pans

Bake at 325 degrees F for 50 minutes to 1 hour (individual oven temperatures vary). Cool 10 minutes, remove from pans. Makes two loaves of Amish Friendship Bread.

If you want to make the starter

Amish Friendship Bread Starter

This is the Amish Friendship Bread Starter Recipe that you’ll need to make the Amish Friendship Bread (above). It is very important to use plastic or wooden utensils and plastic or glass containers when making this. Do not use metal at all!

Ingredients:

1 pkg. active dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water (110°F)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup white sugar
1 cup warm milk (110°F)

Directions:

1. In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast in warm water for about 10 minutes. Stir well.

2. In a 2 quart glass or plastic container, combine 1 cup sifted flour and 1 cup sugar. Mix thoroughly or the flour will get lumpy when you add the milk.

3. Slowly stir in warm milk and dissolved yeast mixture. Loosely cover the mixture with a lid or plastic wrap. The mixture will get bubbly. Consider this Day 1 of the cycle, or the day you receive the starter.

For the next 10 days handle starter according to the instructions above for Amish Friendship Bread.

Here is what I did for the last two variations:

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip:

substitute oil with 3/4 c pumpkin and 1/4 c oil

use chocolate pudding instead of vanilla

add 1 c chocolate chips **

Apple Cinnamon:

substitute oil with 3/4 c applesauce and 1/4 c oil

increase cinnamon to 2 tsp

add 2 apples finely chopped **

** for both bread I had to cook longer, about 1 hour and 5-10 min.

This is the apple bread. Didn't take a picture of the pumpkin.